The story begins with a wolf standing by the side of the road. This isn’t the story you might think. There’s no helpless girl, no feckless pigs, no trickery. What there is, is hunger. Hunger for food, as always, and a hunger to roam. The woods are broad. Even though they are cross-stitched with fences and pocked with houses that must be avoided they extend...
Read MoreAn everyday dispute or death; Another week, another shooting
We were away when the shooting happened. We were perhaps listening to Annette McGivney read from her fine new book about a murder in Havasu Canyon, Pure Land or hearing Four Cornered Room play sweet melodies or watching a funny feminist-liberation scene from the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. It was lively at the...
Read MoreInside the forest of change; “Prone to Collapse” rises in Flagstaff
Time was when a bunch of trees waving their branches overhead was enough. I’d lie on my back, on the lawn, and watch the clouds catch in and release from their branches. That was enough to pass a summer afternoon. The trees, in my case, were Midwestern oaks, ashes, maples, but that didn’t really matter; it was a timeless occupation, a fullness that...
Read MoreLooking for J.A. Bostwick; Simple scene, complicated backstory
This much is true: it was another year when the world was going to hell. 1939. Over in Europe, the Nazis were buzzing like a nest of stirred-up hornets soon to boil over their neighbors. In the Pacific, the Japanese were off on their own adventures in conquest. But in Flagstaff, J.A. Bostwick was rendering a peaceful landscape. I don’t have the full...
Read MoreSpooning; Running my mind over the smooth shape of the past
In our family, spoons have come handed down through earth and air. The first is easier to explain, as I’m sure the cupboards or other reliquaries of many have been enriched by the addition of silverware from long-dead grandmothers and great-aunts. As have ours. But we have also literally unearthed a few. Every year there is occasion to dig in our rocky Old...
Read More